Happy Family: A Memoir in Past and Present Tense
On the left is my grandmother Bootsie, on the right my mother Joanne, a photo taken years before I was born.
And this is from my work in progress, from the perspective of late 2019, clueless—like the rest of the world—to what 2020 held in store:
“Bootsie—my maternal grandmother—died at age sixty-five. More accurately, age sixty-five years, one month, twenty-two days—I’ve done the math. I’ll reach that age the second week of November. In April of 2021, I’ll reach the age my mom reached—sixty-six years, six months, nineteen days. None of it fully computes. No blueprint on the matrilineal line. No idea what the future should look like, and way too convoluted a relationship with the past.”
In the photo below, that’s me on my mother's lap, with my sister Layne to the right and Tommy to the left. Below that, the two of us with our father.
And this is from my work in progress, from the perspective of late 2019, clueless—like the rest of the world—to what 2020 held in store:
“Bootsie—my maternal grandmother—died at age sixty-five. More accurately, age sixty-five years, one month, twenty-two days—I’ve done the math. I’ll reach that age the second week of November. In April of 2021, I’ll reach the age my mom reached—sixty-six years, six months, nineteen days. None of it fully computes. No blueprint on the matrilineal line. No idea what the future should look like, and way too convoluted a relationship with the past.”
In the photo below, that’s me on my mother's lap, with my sister Layne to the right and Tommy to the left. Below that, the two of us with our father.
Happy Family unfolds by way of two entwined narratives, the first spanning a century and four continents—secrecy and strong bonds, adventure and trauma, expatriatism, alcoholism, and way to many instances of unexpected death—and the second a nineteen-month period of staying close to home, global pandemic raging. In the end, as the narratives merge, my tumultuous past is losing its grip, and I’m eyeing the future.
